Roses Are Red facts for kids
Quick facts for kids "Roses Are Red" |
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William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for "Roses are red", from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose
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| Nursery rhyme | |
| Written | 1784 |
"Roses Are Red" is a very famous children's poem. It's a rhyming poem that many people use as a love poem, especially around Valentine's Day. It has a special number, 19798, in a list of folk songs called the Roud Folk Song Index.
Here is the most common version of the poem:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you.
Where Did "Roses Are Red" Come From?
The idea of using "roses are red" in poems is very old. It can be found in a long poem called The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, written way back in 1590.
Here is a part of Spenser's poem that sounds similar:
It was upon a Sommers shynie day,
When Titan faire his beames did display,
In a fresh fountaine, farre from all mens vew,
She bath'd her brest, the boyling heat t'allay;
She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.
A poem much closer to the "Roses Are Red" we know today appeared in 1784. It was in a collection of English nursery rhymes called Gammer Gurton's Garland.
This older version went like this:
The famous French writer Victor Hugo also used similar lines in his 1862 novel Les Misérables. One of his characters, Fantine, sings a song that, in English, was translated this way:
We will buy very pretty things
A-walking through the faubourgs.
Violets are blue, roses are red,
Violets are blue, I love my loves.
In the original French, the flowers were cornflowers (blue) and pink roses. But the English translation made them violets (blue) and red roses, making it sound more like the English nursery rhyme.
Fun and Funny Versions
Over the years, many people have made funny or silly versions of "Roses Are Red." Children often make up their own silly rhymes.
Here are a few examples:
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Onions stink.
And so do you.
The country music singer Roger Miller used a funny version in his 1964 song "Dang Me":
They say roses are red and violets are purple
Sugar's sweet and so is maple syruple. [sic]
In the movie Horse Feathers, one of the Marx Brothers, Chico Marx, made a funny version about a health problem:
Cirrhosis are red,
so violets are blue,
so sugar is sweet,
so so are you.
And the comedian Benny Hill had his own funny take:
Roses are yellow
Violets are bluish
If it weren't for Christmas
We'd all be Jewish.
See also
In Spanish: Roses Are Red para niños
